{"id":616011,"date":"2025-12-06T13:32:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T13:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/616011\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T13:32:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T13:32:14","slug":"the-album-elvis-costello-said-was-too-good-to-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/616011\/","title":{"rendered":"The album Elvis Costello said was too good to understand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elvis<\/p>\n

(Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 6 December 2025 10:00, UK <\/p>\n

Having come of age during the 1960s, Elvis Costello<\/a> joined the musical world in time for the punk boom of the 1970s, and then, having been through the excitement of the \u201880s and \u201890s, the 2000s were leaving something to be desired.<\/p>\n

In particular, the 2010s seemed to be lacking for him as Costello wasn\u2019t much of a fan of the modern indie boom, nor was he into the cookie-cutter pop of the radio. Having witnessed legends in their prime and been there as history was being made, album by album, finding himself in what he saw as a dead zone must have been exhausting. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that good stuff didn\u2019t come out at the start of the decade, obviously, with the Arctic Monkeys storming the rock world in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Costello, by that point, had already settled into a nice friendship and state of mutual admiration with the band. Still, he\u2019s also a fan of Nick Cave, which surprisingly, only happened in 2013 when the latter released Push the Sky Away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Costello\u2019s issue was that he didn\u2019t feel particularly challenged by music, or feel like anyone was truly pushing it to new, exciting or even interestingly difficult places, until 2020 hit. \u201cI heard more original music in the first five or six songs of this extraordinary record than I had in the last five or six years,\u201d he said, talking about the experience of hearing Fiona Apple\u2019s Fetch The Bolt Cutters<\/a> for the first time. <\/p>\n

When Apple released the album, delivering new music for the first time in eight years, many felt the same. Right as the Covid pandemic and its lockdown<\/a> was beginning to mess with our minds and the isolation was kicking in, her work felt perfectly timed, giving people something to really sink their teeth into. There was really no better moment for an album from the artist, as her work has always been rich and thick with layers that demand to be unpacked over time. <\/p>\n

Costello has been a long-running fan, recalling an experience of standing beside her to witness firsthand her power as she took on one of his songs, \u2018I Want You\u2019, which she \u201crendered with the intensity of the most desperate Shakespearean soliloquy\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, on this latest album, he was astounded all over again, recounting in his review, \u201cThere is such imagination, humour and passion in songs like, \u2018I Want You To Love Me\u2019, \u2018Shameika\u2019 and \u2018Under The Table\u2019, so if I suggest these qualities are \u2018in balance\u2019 it is the kind of fearless, improvised seesaw of art and craft, like a raw plank dropped on a log on a woodland clearing.\u201d <\/p>\n

His words are kind of jumbled, and his meaning there slightly unclear, lost in an inarticulate battle with the album\u2019s complexity, but really, that\u2019s exactly how the record feels for him, as it was one that truly baffled him, leaving him almost unable to understand how Apple had even crafted such a thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe constant surprise of the arrangements and the proximity of the singer to feeling means that I have absolutely no idea how this all came into being, and I like it better that way,\u201d he said, resolving to merely enjoy the album rather than try to understand it, to surrender to the stories and feelings involved as opposed to getting too analytical. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Alamy) Sat 6 December 2025 10:00, UK Having come of age during the 1960s, Elvis Costello joined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[60274,77,191922,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-616011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-elvis-costello","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fiona-apple","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115672878755038567","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}